"the flaw"

My sons are always asking "and where was Mum?" when going through family photos. I'm not sure that they are convinced by the answer that I was there, but either behind the camera or just out of shot. (A typical album photo: I am the green-sleeved arm).

This poem by Robin Robertson, from The Wrecking Light, made me catch my breath as I recognised myself: hiding from the camera, but always there "...a figure in the background, stepping from the frame." I don't know if he meant it so literally, or whether it was a way of expressing his feelings about his physical or emotional absence from events, or something else entirely. The only thing I am certain of is that I feel a sadness and disconnectedness reading it.

But once you release your words into the world, they become whatever the reader's experience makes them. I'd like to think he'd just be happy that his words "spoke" to me. Anyway, from now on I will try to be less vain and camera-shy so that my children have pictures of me at as many ages and in as many moods & settings as I have of them. I hope never to hear "and where was Mum?" again.

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 ALBUM by Robin Robertson :


I am almost never there, in these
old photographs: a hand
or shoulder, out of focus; a figure
in the background,
stepping from the frame.
I see myself, sometimes, in the restless
blur of a child, that flinch
in the eye, or the way
sun leaks it's gold into the print;
or there, in that long white gash
across the face of the glass
on the wall behind. That 
smear of light
the sign of me, leaving.


Look closely 
at these snapshots, all this
Kodacolor going to blue, and you'll
start to notice. When you finally see me, 
you'll see me everywhere: floating
over crocuses, sandcastles, 
fallen leaves, on those
melting snowmen, their faces
drawn in coal - among all
the wedding guests,
the dinner guests, the birthday-
party guests - this smoke
in the emulsion, the flaw.
A ghost is there: the ghost gets up to go.